Well said Alex..and I have to say I agree...I don't care WHO is to blame for things being slow, etc..bottom line is our own citizens and they are NOT refugee's that term is do degrading and driving me NUTSO..were starving for 4 days, w/o shelter, and just left to their filth. Even the strong were dying on our streets. I am disgusted with just about every aspect of this effort and hope that this does not tarnish these people's thoughts on the govt forever. Thank goodness the Mayor of NO spoke out and showed his real side through this. I hope and pray that everyone is safe now and finds their loved ones.

Alex and Chris thanks for putting my thoughts into words better than I could. I feel exactly the same.

About people saying things, Alex I've heard everything you have plus this: I've had two different "christians"(they went to two different churches) say that God was just trying to wash out the sin in the streets of New Orleans and that he wiped out the casinos b/c they are the work of the devil. I mean, do you really think that he killed thousands of innocents to do that?

Last summer DH and I went to a big meeting in NO and brought Chloe with us. We were very busy, DH was making a big presentation etc. We hardly went outside of the Convention Center except on our morning walk from the Royal Sonesta in the French Quarter and back again. Each day, Chloe was in daycare in one of the rooms. We never really had time to enjoy the sights or sounds, never went to see the historic mansions... just had a few enjoyable dinners... went to KPaul's.

Now! Well, I remember the convention center vividly. It's a huge and empty barn. How those people survived that experience is beyond me... it's like a knife in my heart to see all the places that I stood, waiting for buses etc. with all my fellow science wonks.. become such vivid picture of human misery and organizational or governmental indifference. If Harry Connick Jr. can go there and be interviewed and filmed there.... why oh why couldn't some support.. no matter how meagre and insufficient, have been brought?????

I have a friend and colleague who lives in NO. I'm sure that she's safely away from there. I don't have anyway to contact her except via her work email.... so I sent my message anyway... and it comes back as undeliverable.. "recipient unknown". I know it's probably because the relevent servers are underwater..... but it seems metaphorical also........ I'm not certain at what point a portion of our population decided to write off the people and city of NO.... but it really seems like this is what has happened.

Needless to say if this type of disaster happened in probably the vast maority of our states the results would be exactly the same. There are only probably a handful of states that are equipped to handle a disaster of this maginitude (NY and CA maybe TX).

Lets hope that this does open some eyes of people to the blight of the poor, disabled and sick in this country

Let me just say...I don't have cable/satellite/antennae/zip, so we don't watch TV. The news we get is internet and third party (family). I couldn't understand the racial issue until Alex's post (thanks). I do have one question. Did Dubya take AirForce 1 to NO? Did he take anyone from NO with him when he left?? Would there have been room?

Alex, thanks also for shedding some light on the 700 well-dressed men that were safely evacuated while infants, children, and mothers cried for hunger, pain, fear, and the complete loss of self. Puts our societal systems back where they've always (respectively) been.

My heart breaks literally.

Erin, I agree. Had this happened anywhere else, I believe the results would likely be the same.

Wanted to chime in here, but I know where I work at it has been underfunded for years and it was just a matter of time before a major disaster hit. Every year our General and a delegation go to congress and beg for money to fix the nation's infrastructure. We also beg for money to clean up bad environmental sites (radioactive site, chemicals that have been dumped, etc), guess what they always slash our budget more. Do more with less. Our office has 5 contract specialists and one chief. They won't give us an admin or computer person even though we have begged for one and desperately need one. So instead of me working on things that I was hired to do, like negotiating and administering a contract, I spend at least 1 day a week filing and putting the paperwork for a contract together, or writing form letters, etc. Last year before I got pregnant, I worked almost 500 hours of overtime. Yeah you read that right. Because it is cheaper for them to pay me overtime than to hire another person. This year I refused to work any overtime because I was ill. Quite frankly, I won't be doing overtime when I get back either because I don't need the stress from it. So now we have sites not being cleaned up because of no money, and those levees broke because our agency wasn't given the money to fix them. We have dams and other infrastructure that desparately need fixing and the administration won't give us the money for it. We have been told all of the money is going to rebuild Iraq. Quite frankly I don't give a rat's *** about Iraq. We need to fix our own country first before fixing and rebuilding another country! They should have had buses that went into the city before the hurricane hit to evacuate people. I seem to remember that Charleston, SC had buses evacauting the city's poor when hurricane Hugo hit and people who didn't get on a bus out of town, had other city folks giving them a ride. Neighbors helping neighbors. Pretty much downtown Charleston was a ghost town and it is a low lying area that floods terribly during a light rain. Ohhh I am so irked by this and to know that several babies died because fo heat exhaustion and no food at the superdome.

The hyatt hotal nad been severly damaged in the storm wiht every single window blown out on the side facing the water. 2nd, the national guard had already commendeered buses tourists had paid $25k to come evacute them already. Finally, it was stated they were evacuating the hyatt because they needed someplace to start housing the 40k soliders now in the region. We aren't tlaking about people who had been living it up comfortably either, but rather still had no electricty, no running water (probaly could still use the toilets though), and little to no food. Ohh and they weren't all men, there were woman and some families in that as well that were simply trying to get out of the city so they could go home.

The whole thing doesn't help when instead of starting to get people out of the shelters of last resort, they have to spend 2-3 days first trying to search and rescue some 10-30k people who stayed in their homes. I am sure that some of the problem also stems from not knowing exactly how the problem with the leeves was going to pan out to how they would be able to start moving people

As for why people weren't evacuated out of town by buses before the storm hit.. that blame rests solely on LA and New Orleans as they are the only ones who had the power to (or ability) to proivde that kind of transportation on short notice. The state or city did not take the threat of the storm serious enough beleiving that the residents would be safe in the shelters etc.. People can scream and yell at the feds all they want, but they also need to take a good long hard look at how the state and city government handled the situation as well. Questions like why were policemen still in their homes when the storm hit and not at shelters, why wasn't the national guard activated and moving prior to the storm hitting, why didn't the city have any contigency plan for if things went wrong?

From an outsiders perspective, it almost seems like the city and state through up their hands and expected the feds just to deal with everything without even asking (as I saw a remark made by either the mayor of NO or someone in LA gov why they had to request the $23 million in supplies for 1st responders, well because thats the way our government's interact via the constitution) which just simply how the whole thing works. While it may have been more efficient for the Fed's just to step in immediately and take over, they simply cannot. It is not their place nor their responsability. It is first and foremost Lousianna's (case law clearly states that Congress cannot interfere with the funcitoning of a state, even when the state wants it to, without express permission).

This is a very hard way to learn this lesson and hopefully other states (and LA0 will start to better prepare for situations like this one and how they can more quickly allow federal response . (BTW I think why the feds could more easily respond to 9/11 is they may have original jurisdiction because out of state flights on airplanes were used, but even then most of the work and response was being done by NY/NJ and not the federal government).

Sabrina, your abo****ely right that infastructure in this country gets cut big time. It has taken almost 20 years for some areas here to complete their levee projects because they have always been underfunded. In that time frame we have had 1-2 major floods and a number of smaller floods. All of which could have been avoided or partially avoided. A huge point will be raised now about environmentalism and how our inability to address air quality problems AND protect important land types (like wild marsh land) take away some of the natural protection we have against dangers of this sort. In essence, our desire for more space, more view and to be the perfect spot also helps these problems to occur. Can we fix it, sure but I doubt anyone would like the result of what would have to happen. So we just continue to face these dangers and pray that next time we will be a little better prepared so its not quite so bad.

As for why people weren't evacuated out of town by buses before the storm hit.. that blame rests solely on LA and New Orleans as they are the only ones who had the power to (or ability) to proivde that kind of transportation on short notice. The state or city did not take the threat of the storm serious enough beleiving that the residents would be safe in the shelters etc.. People can scream and yell at the feds all they want, but they also need to take a good long hard look at how the state and city government handled the situation as well. Questions like why were policemen still in their homes when the storm hit and not at shelters, why wasn't the national guard activated and moving prior to the storm hitting, why didn't the city have any contigency plan for if things went wrong?

Erin, I doubt the fed and state gov't watch the Weather Channel to find out whether a major hurricane is going to hit, but I had talked to many many people that said they weren't going to leave b/c everytime a hurricane comes through, the Weather Channel, CNN, Fox all make it sound like it's the deadliest thing to hit the South. So, they miss work, rent hotel rooms, worry theirselves sick, then find out that it's nothing more than a thunderstorm. People just start staying home, b/c they're tired of news programs just trying to get viewers when it's not that big of a deal. Anyway, I just wanted to point that out, since I had been told that quite a few times.

As far as the Hyatt, wasn't it a direct order from Naigin to get them out of there before the people in the Superdome?

Speaking of looters, I saw a family that was told by the cops to get out of a car that they had stolen. They had a baby with them and got tired of waiting for a bus, so they tried to get out of town with a car. Even that, I don't see anything wrong with, they were only trying to save themselves. There was also a story of a young man who stole a school bus and picked up about 80 evacuees, then drove everyone to the Astrodome. To me, both of these are understandable.